The subject application relates to transparency mounts and more specifically, it relates to a commercial photography mount for the stock photography market.
Historically, commercial photographers have used commercially available mounts for presentation of their work in portfolios and for presentation of their selected best shots to clients who have given them photographic shooting assignments. "Large size" or "portfolio size" products are loosely defined as products having a finished outside dimension of eight inches by ten inches or eleven inches by fourteen inches and any one of many possible inside single or multiple windows commonly referred to as the "image area". A traditional method of obtaining a photograph of a "girl in bikini" or "woman in a business suit" for use in a print ad, brochure or billboard is to give a commercial photographer a shooting assignment. As is known in the industry, these assignments can be "location" or "studio" shoots. Depending on the assignment, the location photographer alone or travelling with an entourage of assistants, art/creative director(s), model(s), prop people, etc. travel across town or around the world to do the shoot.
Studio photography can also be very involved. Assignments may require the services of some or all of the types mentioned above. In addition, either may need the support of some very expensive equipment such as cranes, helicopters, fire control and the like.
It can readily be seen from the above discussion that both studio photography and location photography can be very, very expensive.
The aforementioned type of commercial photography and its associated expense has served as a catalyst for the "stock photography house". A stock photography house serves as a photography library. The larger stock photography houses maintain "in stock" thousands and in some cases, millions of photographs. With the entry of stock photography houses on the commercial photography scene, a publisher of a magazine needing a photograph of a girl in a bikini on Waikiki beach with only palm trees and Diamond Head in the background need only call the stock photography house and state their requirements.
The stock photography house will research their files and send the publisher several dozen different photographs which will meet the requirements of the publisher. The publisher will then select the particular photograph or photographs which he will use. The main advantage stock photography houses offer is price. The photographs which they supply to the publisher or any other client are rented for a particular usage, i.e. for a particular number of pieces that will be printed or posted on billboards, for a certain period of time of a particular ad campaign. The cost of "renting" these photographs can be as low as $150.00 per image, i.e. shots, photos, transparencies, pictures, and up to tens of thousands of dollars for a particularly excellent image or one used in an extensive print run or ad campaign. Compared to the cost of assignment or studio photography, this can prove to be a real bargain as well being much faster.
For the purposes of providing a complete background in the instant application, it is important to know that the photographs in a stock house are usually kept and presented in a "transparency" form. A 35 mm slide is an example of a common transparency. It is transparent and by holding it up to the light, one can see the images thereon. In addition, it is a film positive, that when projected, held to the light or laid on a light box, it shows a "right reading" image, i.e. not a "wrong reading" image as in a film negative where the light images are dark and the dark images are light.
When a transparency leaves a stock house, the images are packed in a variety of ways depending upon the procedures and policies of the particular stock house. The most common packaging is as follows:
(1) The transparency is placed into a clear plastic sleeve (such as acetate) to protect it from scratches and dust since the transparency is a film material and is quite fragile. Frequently, the lab that develops the film will place the transparency in such a sleeve when it is returned after developing.
(2) The transparency while in the clear plastic sleeve, is then positioned in the window and affixed to the inside of a transparency mount with tape. Transparency mounts are normally made of a paper stock. The mount is then closed and usually sealed with some type of adhesive seal that prevents the removal of the transparency without the seal being broken. These seals often carry warnings to the effect that, "if this seal is broken, you've bought the rental price of the image".
Once the package is received by the client, the images are examined and hopefully one or more will be suitable for the project at hand. The client then contacts the stock house, a price is negotiated, an agreement struck and permission is given to the client to reproduce the image or images in accordance with the terms of the agreement.
At this time, the paper transparency mount is opened by the client, removed from the sleeve and reproduced for use in printing. The bought and unbought images are then returned to the stock house, refiled and stored for future use.
As one can readily recognize, the transparency must be removed from the mount and acetate sleeve to provide the greatest quality print. However, as a means of preventing the unauthorized removal of the transparency from its mount, i.e. the removal, printing and returning to the stock house without paying the required rental fee, some stock houses, photo labs and photographers have required their mount supplier to provide a mount which when sealed after the insertion of the transparency, will literally require the destruction of the mount which would require the client to pay for the mounts returned in the destructed condition.